The pact signed by PSOE and PP to renew the General Council of the Judiciary after more than five years of blockade is not much different from the agreement that they already explored at the end of 2022. But then Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party got up from the table alleging that they could not reach an agreement with Pedro Sánchez after repealing the crime of sedition. As two years ago, the text contemplates measures such as regulating the revolving doors between politics and Justice, raising the bar for judges who want to enter the Supreme Court or creating a commission to study possible changes in the system of electing members.
20 years to go to the Supreme Court. The 2022 agreement was never written down with the signature of both parties, but the measures were essentially the same as those that cement the agreement known this week to renew the governing body of the judges. The requirement that candidates for the Supreme Court have 20 years of experience in practice to be able to enter the court is identical, for example, a red line that at the time would have left out, among others, Carlos Lesmes. The first demands of the PP in 2022 even raised that bar to 25 years.
Appointments by three-fifths majority. The requirement that some Council agreements be reached by three-fifths of the plenary session and not by a simple majority is also the same to reinforce the need for agreements when making these types of decisions. It affects both the appointment of presidencies of provincial courts, which currently have three dozen vacancies, and of the Supreme Court magistrate in charge of supervising the investigative activity of the National Intelligence Center.
Study the reform of the system. It is also not a novelty that the creation of a commission within the governing body of the judges to explore future reforms on the system of election of members has been agreed. From Europe, the demand has always been the same: that the CGPJ be renewed and that, afterwards, these changes be analysed to adjust to community standards. The agreement signed this week by PSOE and PP requires the Council, within six months, to make “a study on the European systems for the election of members in analogous bodies” and a legal proposal.
It is something identical to what the PP proposed in October 2022 in a document: “Proposal to strengthen judicial independence and democratic quality in Spain”. This proposed agreement involved entrusting “a reform proposal to the new CGPJ” to be carried out “within a non-extendable period of six months”, the same as that imposed now.
The revolving doors. The stricter regulation of the revolving doors between Justice and politics, the coming and going of deputies or ministers from Congress and the Moncloa to the courts, also already appeared in that first agreement with some points formulated in a different or less specific way. In October 2022, for example, the document proposed by the PP already had a clause to regulate cases such as that of Dolores Delgado and prevent “those who have held political positions in the previous five years” from being able to hold the position of attorney general.
The agreement reached this week is along the same lines, being more specific in terms of the political positions to which it refers: neither ministers, nor secretaries of State, nor counselors, nor mayors. Nor MEPs, deputies, senators or regional deputies. The new agreement adds that the attorney general will have to be subject to the same causes of abstention as the judges and that the last word will be the board of court prosecutors. This same prohibition of having held those same political positions extends to members of the Council and already appeared among the demands of the PP in 2022.
The return of judges or magistrates to the courts after practicing politics is also regulated. If they have worked as a public official or as a position of trust “with a rank higher than director general” they will not be able to return to active service until two years after leaving office. If they request re-entry, during those two years they will “be assigned” to the president of the highest court in the region where they were serving before entering politics, although without lowering their salary. At the end of 2022, the agreement was very similar and focused on one of its functions: they could not impose sentences in those two years after their return.
Vowels that repeat. The 12 members of judicial origin come from the same list of candidates that was launched in 2018 when the mandate of the current Council expired. And this week they have repeated a good part of those who already then sounded like the best positioned by both parties to become members. Also when in 2022 they were close to the pact again. As for the eight jurists, some names such as Luis Martín Contreras or Bernardo Fernández have remained since 2018.
The resignations. There is a demand in that document that does not appear in the pact that the PP has finally signed with Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE: reversing the CGPJ’s prohibition on making appointments to the judicial leadership while its mandate has expired. “It must be repealed in its entirety and not only with regard to the TC,” said those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo shortly before leaving the table for the sedition reform. In the agreement released this week, that requirement does not appear.
The PP’s claims in 2022 also included a series of fundamental points that do not appear in the new pact signed with the PSOE to renew the governing body of the judges. For example, that the negotiation took place in the Cortes Generales, when it has been carried out between the two main parties with the mediation of Europe.
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